Thursday, June 19, 2008

Wisdom and Timing

For all his wisdom and beauty, his sensitivity and gentleness, it must be said that Duncan certainly knows how to crash a party.

Nearly every afternoon on our walks through the park or down around the lake, Summer revelers have gathered to picnic, play volleyball or Ultimate, practice soccer, or merely lounge in the grass, their faces and tanned bodies illuminated by the sun, their blankets spread out with their collections of food, coolers and boom boxes. Nothing makes people happier than frolicking and laying under a warm blue sky, unless they can do it in large groups, be they family or friends, schoolmates or veterans organizations, those annoying spandex clad women who practice strollaerobics, after work league or people like me, who just stop to chat up strangers as we make our way through to somewhere––and occasionally nowhere––else. People like to gather, and Duncan likes the gathering of people. If only his timing were better.

It seems that the moment we approach people, near their picnic tables or on the edges of their games, Duncan decides there is no finer place to manage a Big Job and so he does his little circle and sniff dance, squats, circles and sniffs some more, then gets down to business. Dogs tend to look somewhat embarrassed by the whole procedure, and Duncan is no exception, but it gets worse when I'm standing nearby, leash in hand, smiling politely at the family gathered around their potato salad and brats watching the whole thing with a look of disgust on their faces.

In such situations it's difficult to chat people up and so I smile, a tight closed-mouth grin, and bob my head, offering my sighs and the occasional shrug until he's done and kicking the grass out from behind him.

Tonight, near the Dave Saunders Memorial Baseball field, the little twit got kind of ballsy and actually attempted to mark someone's cooler as his own, raising his leg and sidling right up to it. I gasped as an older woman, a tight-cheeked former member of the Juicy Bun club, pointed and tried to speak but couldn't find the words. "Duncan," I cried and pulled him away. He shot me a "What gives? It was almost ours!" kind of look and ambled along beside me.

About Me

Rarely do I watch the news because most days I'm frantically trying to keep up on all my podcasts. This does not, however, mean I'm ignorant of current events or soft on my opinions. I spend a lot of time on the phone talking to faraway voices or walking with Duncan, wrestling with Duncan, playing fetch with Duncan, feeding and cleaning up after Duncan. Sometimes I knit, sometimes I don't. I went to school at Lake Forest College, in Lake Forest, Illinois--the worst most beautiful town I've ever set foot in. I grew up in Pocatello, Idaho, a city cursed twice: first, by a Shoshone Bannock chief; and second by a rather large population of small-minded people who like to pretend they know what they're doing. I'm a recovering Idahoan but have never been weighed down by a real addiction, such as drugs, booze or religion.